"There's a problem with Solaris and Sun knows it. The installation experience of Solaris (along with other areas) could be greatly improved. The installer doesn't 'suck' as it's easy and known to Solaris administrators, but for a Linux or Windows user it could prove to be a bit challenging. For those of you that have never tried out Solaris, what we've decided to do is to show you this 'usability gap' with the installation process in Solaris compared to Linux. Is the experience really that bad?"

While I concur that the Fedora installer is a lot prettier, one really questions the usefulness of this “eye candy” to a system administrator—as I don’t expect a “Windows user” to be playing video games on Solaris anytime soon. For a truly Spartan installer (that makes the Solaris installer look “sexy” by comparison) that strictly does the job of an installer by very quickly getting the OS on a hard drive and nothing more, the author might want to check out OpenBSD—and I hope the OpenBSD developers continue to craft a secure OS instead of spending lots of time on an eye candy-based installer.

I don't think anyone was complaining about the lack of eye candy. Solaris is not marketed to the masses for regular desktop usage. It is just that it is different enough from even text-based Linux installers to make it a pain for those not versed in the peculiarities of Solaris. OpenBSD is an altogether different beast with a different set of challenges. Speaking as a hobbyist, I actually got further along installing OpenBSD than Solaris. Not an issue for professionals obviously.